CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2022

CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2022
UGent-VUB onderzoeksgroep The Inside Story: Kunst, interieur en architectuur 1750-1950
28 april 2022
Het Pand, Gent

CFP deadline: 11 november 2021

Voor de Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design kunnen voorstellen ingediend worden voor presentaties van lopend of recent afgerond onderzoek in het domein van de interieur- en designgeschiedenis. De focus ligt op de geschiedenis en praktijk van interieur en design in België/ de Lage Landen, of in relatie tot deze regio. De studiedag wil in eerste instantie een forum bieden en een stimulans betekenen voor diverse vormen van onderzoek gevoerd in en over België en Nederland, en gaat daarom door in het Nederlands, hoewel uitzonderlijk ook Frans en Engels welkom zijn.

Beoogd is onderzoek gevoerd in academische en museumcontext, alsook in de monumentenzorg en erfgoedsector. Ook de presentatie van artistiek ontwerpend onderzoek is welkom, eventueel in een alternatief format. Er wordt gestreefd naar een evenwichtig programma waarin diverse wetenschappelijke disciplines (bv. kunstgeschiedenis, architectuurgeschiedenis, geschiedenis, literatuurstudie, gender studies, enz.), diverse historische periodes, materies, en werkdomeinen aan bod komen, en waarin zowel senior als junior onderzoekers een forum krijgen.

De Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2022 zal plaatsvinden op do. 28 april 2022 in Het Pand in Gent. Presentaties duren max. 20 minuten. Onderzoekers-ontwerpers die een ander format dan een klassieke lezing willen voorstellen, worden gevraagd hun opzet te preciseren.

Stuur vóór 11 nov. per e-mail aan malika.mranialaoui@ugent.be de volgende informatie in 1 bestand (max. 2 pgs.):

• uw naam + e-mailadres
• een werktitel
• een abstract (max. 300 woorden, in het Nederlands)
• een of twee afbeelding(en) met betrekking tot het voorgestelde onderzoek
• een korte bio (max. 200 woorden).

De voorstellen worden beoordeeld door het organiserend en wetenschappelijk comité. U ontvangt voor de Kerstvakantie bericht of uw voorstel aanvaard werd.

Wie zijn/haar lezing wil publiceren, kan deze herwerken tot artikel en voorleggen aan de redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design (deadline: 15 juni).

Meer info vindt u op de website van de studiedag.

CFP: Ways of Studying: Towards New Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art

Call for Papers: Ways of Studying: Towards New Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art
Organised by the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA)
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History
Date: 19-20 May 2022
Submission deadline: 17 December 2021

In the autumn of 2020, the Van Gogh Museum, in collaboration with ESNA and the University of
Amsterdam, organized a series of roundtable discussions that from various angles sought to address
the question of “diversifying” the canon of nineteenth-century art and making art-historical practice
more “inclusive.” The aim of these meetings, followed up in January 2021 by the annual ESNA
Winter Seminar on the same topic, was to formulate concrete research strands, which, rather than
simply broadening the nineteenth-century canon, would substantially change it. Ideally, these would
give direction to university teaching, exhibitions, and collection building over the next five years.

It soon became clear, however, that the terms “diversification” and “inclusion” were in themselves
problematic, as they imply that the current disciplinary system would remain intact. One might study
art from other parts of the world or by “Other” creators, one might expand the canon, but the idea
that the history of nineteenth-century art followed a certain developmental pattern, one that
culminated in an avant-garde that then went on to shape Modernism, would not necessarily be

affected. Instead, one might better seek to fundamentally decolonize the history of nineteenth-
century art. This term, too, is not unproblematic: it has a particular historical dimension, but in

recent times has come to stand more generally for a call to both recognize and challenge hierarchies
in and beyond the academy and the art world, not only those resulting from concrete actions in the
(colonial) past but also those linked to questions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Ideally, a
decolonized history of nineteenth-century art would not only add new voices and objects to the
existing canon but would productively mobilize the awareness of the ways in which what we study,
teach, and display reflects European hegemony. Although this topic is clearly not new, even in the
study of nineteenth-century art, specific recent events and debates, as well as fundamental shifts
within both academia and society at large, lend it a particular sense of urgency.

The study of the nineteenth century can look back on a history of self-renewal and has in the past
been the vehicle for the revitalization of the field of art history as whole. In this sense, we see this
conference – together with those organized by our colleagues in other parts of the world – in the
tradition of the so-called “new art history.” We seek to build on the studies of the seminal figures of
the 1970s, 80s and 90s, those who brought new methods to bear on research into objects both
known and unknown and thereby changed the perspective on the period as a whole.

The annual ESNA Conference 2022, Ways of Studying: Towards New Histories of Nineteenth-
Century Art, will expand on this initial phase of reflection, setting it in an international context. We

understand the conference as a kind of laboratory, a place for experiment and exchange. Taking a
two-pronged approach, we seek papers that take case studies as their starting point, but which also
pinpoint and further explore the implications of these new discoveries for the field in general. In this
way, the conference will present new information and address questions of methodology, i.e. “ways
of studying”.

We seek papers which can serve to disrupt and restructure the field of nineteenth-century art
history both in terms of content and method. Proposals should therefore explicitly address the wider
implications of the chosen case study.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• makers from diverse ethnic and gender communities
• works of indigenous or first-nation artists
• neglected objects, media, and genres
• examinations of institutional structures and non-canonical spaces of display
• rethinking geographies of creation
• networks and exchange between Europe and the global south

We particularly encourage the input of junior scholars.

Please submit an abstract of 300 words and your CV by 17 December 2021 to
esnaonline [at] hotmail [dot] com.

Selected speakers will be contacted in January 2022.

CFP: ESNA Talks 2020

CFP: ESNA Talks 2020
European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA) & RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art
History
Filmed presentations on digital platform
CFP deadline: 4 September 2020

Théodore Géricault, Le Radeau de la Méduse, 1818, Paris, Musée du Louvre

Due to the worldwide pandemic, ESNA has had to postpone its conference Thinking in the Box to the spring of next year (27-28 May 2021). In lieu, it will initiate ESNA Talks, an online platform for the presentation of current research into the art and culture of the long nineteenth century.

Researchers are invited to submit an abstract for a digital presentation of between 10 and 20 minutes on a topic of their choice, to esnaonline@hotmail.com. In honor of the seventh anniversary of ESNA’s activities, ESNA will choose seven submissions to be presented online in mid-November. Ideally, abstracts should be submitted on film: one or two slides in a PowerPoint as a filmed presentation. The deadline is 4 September 2020.

The selection of talks will be made by the beginning of October, with the presentations themselves due on 6 November 2020. The talks will be published online via the ESNA website and the website of the RKD under one of the creative-commons licenses. Attention will be generated on social media, via the press and via ESNA's partners.

For ESNA's open letter, which includes the CFP, click here.

CFP: EXTENDED DEADLINE: Cultures of Belgian Space / Cultures de l'espace belge, 1850-1924 (Hingene)

The organization of the Cultures of Belgian Space / Cultures de l'espace belge, 1850-1924 conference (Hingene, 16-17 October 2020) has decided to extend the deadline for paper proposals to the end of this month, i.e. 31 March 2020. 

This decision should allow those colleagues who currently struggle with corona virus-related, practical issues to send in their abstract.

On the conference: see our post of 20 February 2020.

More information can be found here.

CFP: Appearing/ Revealing/ Disappearing: Cultural practices of staging in 19th-century France

CFP: Appearing/ Revealing/ Disappearing: Cultural practices of staging in 19th-century France
University of Lausanne
26-27 March 2020
CFP deadline: 10 December 2019

Generally associated with the theatrical practice and with the performance, the notion of staging played a central role throughout the whole 19th century. The post-revolutionary period largely contributed to develop a process of appearing, disappearing and revealing, intended as the possibility to be seen and to make the self visible on the occasion of socio-cultural and artistic events. The reaction to the turmoil generated by the 1789 Revolution and the austerity engendered by the Terror regime gives evidence of this capacity of juggling the necessity of being seen and the act of disappearing. This aspect will increasingly develop during the 19th century, evidently supported by the growth of the industry of entertainment, the diversification of drama and performances and the mass production of visual culture.
Within this context, staging becomes a way for an individual or a group of individuals to integrate a community. It also represents a bridge between the understanding of the process of appearing and its materialization, a link between the artistic, visual and literary spaces. This symposium aims at discussing mechanisms and patterns surrounding this process by focusing on the multiple references which shaped the act of appearing and disappearing.
Special attention will be paid to the cultural media enabling the staging, such as popular and/or satirical images, theatrical representations, entertainment industry, photography, but also the spatiality related to the staging. The heterogeneous character of these manifestations fosters a multidisciplinary approach which largely relies on transmediality, permeability of points of view and cross-cultural exchanges.

Potential topics could be:

Staging in visual arts
- Representations of staging
- Impact of images on the social status of staging
- Staging through the image: printmaking, caricature, photography
- Staging through the movement, the animated image and the projection

Materialities of staging
- Staging through theatrical performances
- Staging through the industry of entertainment
- Cultural practices linked to the organization of shows
- Diversification of the modalities of staging

The cult of performance
- Permeability of medias and genres
- Representation of the self and of the other
- Actors and personifications

The space of staging
- Space as catalyst for staging and the relationship to the audience
- Spatiality and interactions of staging
- The literary space between fiction and theatrical genres

Proposals (maximum 250 words), in French or English, have to be sent, together with a short bio-bibliography (maximum 500 words) to Camilla Murgia at the following address: camilla.murgia@unil.ch, by December 10, 2019. Accepted papers will be notified by the end of
December 2019. Papers will be published in an edited volume.

The conference is sponsored by the Faculty of Humanities, department of History of Art, University of Lausanne and the SHC (Centre des Sciences Historiques de la Culture), University of Lausanne. There is no registration fee for the conference.

CFP: ESNA Winter Seminar 2020 (Den Haag)

CFP: ESNA Winter Seminar 2020: "Eyeopeners: inspirerende inzichten voor de studie van negentiende-eeuwse kunst"
European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art
31 januari 2020
RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis, Den Haag
Deadline CFP: 31 oktober 2019

In navolging van de vorige editie zal het zevende Winter Seminar van de European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA) zich opnieuw richten op het onderzoeksveld zelf. Waar in 2019 twintig specialisten hun mijlpaalmoment hebben toegelicht en die game changers binnen het eigen vakgebied kritisch zijn geëvalueerd, wordt in de editie 2020 bevraagd wat in het verschiet ligt. De ‘new art history’ heeft een bepalende invloed gehad op het repertoire van enkele generaties kunsthistorici en daarmee op onderdelen van het curriculum van de huidige universitaire opleidingen. Veel van die ‘nieuwe’ onderzoekslijnen zijn intussen niet zo nieuw meer en hebben zich vermengd met bestaande, meer traditionele onderzoekspraktijken. Er is opnieuw nood aan innovatieve methodologische en theoretische benaderingen voor het onderzoeksveld.

Wij leggen de bal ditmaal in het kamp van junior kunsthistorici, doctorandi en masterstudenten in de Kunstwetenschappen. Wat houdt hen bezig? Wat of wie inspireert hen? Welke tendensen, inzichten of benaderingen zullen volgens hen invloedrijk of noodzakelijk worden bij de verdere studie van de negentiende-eeuwse kunst? ESNA biedt ditmaal een podium aan de huidige, jonge generatie Kunstwetenschappers, aan zij die ruimdenkend en met een frisse blik naar het vakgebied kijken: welke teksten, tentoonstellingen, congressen, lezingen, films, documentaires, voorstellingen, ‘filmpjes’, gesprekken, etc. veranderden hun begrip van de kunst van de negentiende eeuw? Hoe bepalen deze mijlpaalmomenten of eyeopeners de manier waarop zij het onderzoek naar en de omgang met negentiende-eeuwse kunst concipiëren en zouden willen inrichten of bijsturen voor de toekomst?

Het programma zal wederom bestaan uit snel opeenvolgende, puntige presentaties van max. 5 min. en een slide elk. Ongeveer twintig junior Kunstwetenschappers zullen hun eigen eyeopener presenteren, die hun inzicht in kunst, en specifiek kunst van de negentiende eeuw, openbrak. Zij zullentoelichten wat zij precies inspirerend vonden en waarom, en hoe hun eyeopener mogelijk ook anderen kan inspireren voor toekomstig onderzoek. Dit verzamelde materiaal levert ongetwijfeld stof op voor discussie over heden en toekomst van het kunsthistorisch metier, met uitdagende voorstellen en nieuwe benaderingen.

Ben je geïnteresseerd om jouw eyeopener op 31 januari 2020 in het RKD te presenteren? Stuur vóór 31 oktober een e-mail naar esnaonline@hotmail.com met je voorstel voor een boek, artikel, tentoonstelling of andere uiting voorzien van een korte motivatie.

CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2020

CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2020
UGent-VUB onderzoeksgroep The Inside Story: Kunst, interieur en architectuur 1750-1950
30 april 2020
Het Pand, Gent
CFP deadline: 11 november 2019

Voor de Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design kunnen voorstellen ingediend worden voor presentaties van lopend of recent afgerond onderzoek in het domein van de interieur- en designgeschiedenis. De focus ligt op de geschiedenis en praktijk van interieur en design in België / de Lage Landen, of in relatie tot deze regio. De studiedag wil in eerste instantie een forum bieden en een stimulans betekenen voor diverse vormen van onderzoek gevoerd in en over België en Nederland, en gaat daarom door in het Nederlands, hoewel uitzonderlijk ook presentaties in het Frans en Engels welkom zijn.

Beoogd is onderzoek gevoerd in academische en museumcontext, alsook in de monumentenzorg en erfgoedsector. Ook de presentatie van artistiek ontwerpend onderzoek is welkom, eventueel in een alternatief format. Er wordt gestreefd naar een evenwichtig programma waarin diverse wetenschappelijke disciplines (bv. kunstgeschiedenis, architectuurgeschiedenis, geschiedenis, literatuurstudie, genderstudies, enz.), diverse historische periodes, materies en werkdomeinen aan bod komen, en waarin zowel senior als junior onderzoekers een forum krijgen.

De Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design 2020 zal plaatsvinden op do. 30 april 2020 in Het Pand in Gent. Presentaties duren max. 20 minuten. Onderzoekers-ontwerpers die een ander format dan een klassieke lezing willen voorstellen, worden gevraagd hun opzet te preciseren.

Stuur vóór 11 november per e-mail aan malika.mranialaoui@ugent.be de volgende informatie in 1 bestand (max. 2 pgs.):

• uw naam + e-mailadres
• een werktitel
• een abstract (max. 300 woorden, in het Nederlands)
• een of twee afbeelding(en) met betrekking tot het voorgestelde onderzoek
• een korte bio (max. 200 woorden).

De voorstellen worden beoordeeld door het organiserend en wetenschappelijk comité. U ontvangt vóór de Kerstvakantie bericht of uw voorstel aanvaard werd.

Wie zijn/haar lezing wil publiceren, kan deze herwerken tot artikel en voorleggen aan de redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design (jaarlijkse deadline voor het eerstvolgende nummer: 15 juni).

Meer info vindt u op de website van de studiedag.

COUR: Everlasting Grand Tour: Experiencing Rome through Guidebooks (Rome)

Everlasting Grand Tour. Experiencing Rome through Guidebooks 
Rome
1-5 september 2019 (registration deadline: 30 juni 2019)

The University of Roma Tre, in collaboration with the Rome Art History Network (RAHN) and numerous foreign and Italian academies, presents the course Everlasting Grand Tour. Experiencing Rome through Guidebooks. The course aims to illustrate, through the historical guidebooks on Rome that appeared from the Middle Ages to the present day, the different ways in which the Eternal City has been perceived by travelers, both Italian and foreign. Selected students will therefore have the opportunity to approach the complex and centuries-old history of the city, following privileged paths introduced by scholars of excellence from all over Europe. The course will highlight the importance of outsiders’ gaze for the construction of the image of Rome and its fortune over the centuries.

Planned activities

The course, aimed at an Italian and international public, intends to propose a historical and artistic introduction to the city of Rome, taking as a point departure its main historical guidebooks. The activities will be divided into lectures and on-site visits, entrusted to recognized experts in the field. They will involve Italian cultural institutions and foreign academies, and will require the student’s active participation. All courses are held in English. At the end of the course, students will receive a certificate of attendance from the University of Roma Tre.

Targets

The aim of the Summer School is to offer a historical and artistic introduction to the city of Rome and its millennial history, through its guidebooks, and to investigate the impact they had on the perception of the city through the centuries. The discussions, promoted along the course of these 5 days, will aim to stimulate the critical abilities of the participants regarding the evolution of the means of divulgation of knowledge over the centuries and the importance of foreign presences for the construction of the historical-artistic identity of Rome.

Deadline for registration: 30 June 2019
Contacts: summerschool.dsu@uniroma3.it

Program, details and more information on the websites of Roma Tre, KNIR or Villa Medici.

CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Ontwerp

CFP: Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Ontwerp
UGent-VUB onderzoeksgroep The Inside Story: Kunst, interieur en architectuur 1750-1950
2 mei 2019: Het Pand, Gent
CFP deadline: 11 november 2018

Voor de Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Ontwerp kunnen voorstellen ingediend worden voor presentaties van lopend of recent afgerond onderzoek in het domein van de interieur- en designgeschiedenis. De focus ligt op de geschiedenis en praktijk van interieur en design in België/de Lage Landen, of in relatie tot deze regio. De studiedag wil in eerste instantie een forum bieden en een stimulans betekenen voor diverse vormen van onderzoek gevoerd in en over België en Nederland, en gaat daarom door in het Nederlands en Frans, en uitzonderlijk Engels.

Beoogd is onderzoek gevoerd in academische en museumcontext, alsook in de erfgoedsector. Ook de presentatie van artistiek ontwerpend onderzoek (bv. in de domeinen van design, grafische vormgeving, interieurarchitectuur, textielontwerp, mode, enz.) is welkom, eventueel in een alternatief format. Er wordt gestreefd naar een evenwichtig programma waarin diverse wetenschappelijke disciplines (bv. kunstwetenschappen, architectuurgeschiedenis, geschiedenis, literatuurstudie, gender studies, enz.), diverse historische periodes, materies, en werkdomeinen aan bod komen, en waarin zowel senior als junior onderzoekers een forum krijgen.

De Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Ontwerp 2019 zal plaatsvinden op donderdag 2 mei 2019 in Het Pand in Gent. Presentaties duren max. 20 minuten. Onderzoekers-ontwerpers die een ander format dan een klassieke lezing willen voorstellen, worden gevraagd hun opzet te preciseren.

Stuur vóór 11 nov. per e-mail aan eline.stoop@ugent.be de volgende informatie in 1 bestand (pdf of Word) van max. 2 pgs.:

• uw volledige naam + e-mailadres
• een werktitel
• een abstract (max. 300 woorden, in het Nederlands of Frans (voor Franstaligen))
• een à twee afbeelding(en) met betrekking tot het voorgestelde onderzoek
• een korte bio (max. 150 woorden).

De voorstellen worden beoordeeld door het organiserend en wetenschappelijk comité. U ontvangt voor het jaareinde bericht of uw voorstel werd aanvaard.

Wie zijn/haar lezing wil publiceren, kan deze herwerken tot artikel en voorleggen aan de redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design (jaarlijkse deadline voor het eerstvolgende nummer: 15 juni).

CFP: Frictions and friendships. Cultural encounters in the nineteenth century

CFP: Frictions and friendships. Cultural encounters in the nineteenth century
European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA)
June 19-20, 2019: The Hague, RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History
CFP submission deadline: January 1, 2019

Organized by ESNA, RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History, and NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

The exhibition The Dutch in Paris, which was on show in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and in the Petit Palais, Paris during the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018 respectively, aimed to visualize the artistic exchange between Dutch and French artists between 1789 and 1914. As part of a larger research project, set up by the RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History, the exhibition generated so much response that ESNA, in collaboration with the RKD and NWO, decided to organize an international conference on the subject, focusing specifically on international as well as national and local points of encounter and how they facilitated artistic exchange.

Vincent van Gogh wrote in 1883: ‘I would certainly very much like to spend some time in Paris, because I believe I would get the friction [in Dutch: ‘wrijving’] with artists that I’ll have to have at some point’. Van Gogh used the word ‘friction’ in a positive sense, as an encounter in which he could learn and develop his ideas and his art. Peter Burke defined encounters as information and objects that flow in different directions, even if unequally. He noted that ‘Ideas, information, artefacts and practices are not simply adopted but on the contrary, are adapted to their new cultural environment. They are first decontextualized and then recontextualized, domesticated or localized. In short, they are translated’.

Burke, however, does not address the strategy and process of encounters. In his quest for friction, Van Gogh sought the utopia of a shared workspace but ended up with broken friendships. Frictions and encounters can abrade and chafe but can nevertheless lead to artistic exchange. The various processes involved in the realization of artistic exchange might have friendship at their base but can just as easily be born out of more antagonistic points of view. This paradox, which can be tested through, for example, theories of friendship, hospitality, solidarity, communication, and productive conflict, among others, is what we want to explore during the conference.

We therefore welcome papers in English, French or German which discuss the role of encounters, how they came about and how they facilitated artistic exchange during the long nineteenth century. We specifically welcome papers that present the mechanisms and prerequisites which make a site, a person or an institution an effective point of encounter, with a special focus on the contextual, theoretical and methodological aspects.

Papers may concern the following topics, but are not limited to these:

• The theoretical aspects of encounters;
• The notion of hosting and hospitality;
• The notion of agonism and agonistic spaces;
• Different forms of points of encounter (exhibitions, training studios, cafés, hotels and inns, art galleries, salons, etc.);
• The position of individual actors within the process of encounter and their strategies for the realization of artistic exchange;
• The role of geo-referenced art history and points of encounter;
• Time in the context of encounters;
• The role of gender;
• The role of the art market;
• The role of the art critic

Please send proposals (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute paper in English, French or German for this conference to esnaonline@hotmail.com by January 1, 2019 at the latest. Selected speakers will be contacted by the end of January 2019.

Organizing committee: Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD -Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Malika M’rani Alaoui (RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague)

Scientific committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University Nijmegen), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Wessel Krul (Groningen University), Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (École normale supérieure, Paris), France Nerlich (INHA, Paris), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University), Chris Stolwijk (RKD – Nederlands Institute for Art History / Utrecht University), Susan Waller (University of Missouri St. Louis)

CFP: Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art (Poster Session)

'Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art'
Ghent University & the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA)
Submission deadline: 15 April 2018

ESNA and Ghent University are inviting submissions of proposals for poster presentations, to be given at the Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art conference that will take place in Ghent, Belgium on 15-16 May 2018. Male Bonds is a two-day international conference that aims to explore the place of male bonds in nineteenth-century artistic practice and visual arts. Participation in the poster session is open to Master and PhD students and to early-career researchers from all backgrounds. We welcome papers that undertake the interdisciplinary endeavor of the conference, by marking men in art history as gendered historical subjects. The working language at the conference is English.

Please submit a preliminary title, a short abstract (max 500 words) and a short biography (max 100 words) for a poster presentation, to be sent to esnaonline@hotmail.com by Sunday, 15 April. Selected presenters will be contacted by the end of April.

For the conference website, click here. For the full call for posters, click here. For any enquiries concerning the poster presentations, please contact the ESNA secretary Malika M’rani Alaoui at esnaonline@hotmail.com.

CFP: European Revivals Conference 2017: Cultural Mythologies around 1900

'European Revivals Conference 2017: Cultural Mythologies around 1900'
A partnership between: University of Edinburgh, University of Helsinki, National Galleries of Scotland and Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
1-2 December 2017 at Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, European artists began to express a new and profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This was a discourse that was largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence. Historical scholarship on the subject has been broadly established in many European countries, but research has been dominated by nationalist perspectives that have emphasised the cultural specificity of each country. The European Revivals research project (initiated by the Finnish National Gallery in 2009) aims to stimulate debate on a wider scale. From this perspective, late nineteenth-century cultural revivals appear as a set of complex and interconnected phenomena that are transnational, inherently modern, and with far-reaching consequences.

The topic of the 2017 conference is Cultural Mythologies around 1900. Its aim is to examine issues such as authenticity, ‘rewriting’ and reinterpretation in relation to the production and assimilation of national styles, symbols and cultural narratives in late nineteenth century European art and literature. The conference will draw attention to the constructed and imaginary nature of national identities and the role of various mythical traditions and ‘reinventions’ within this context. Papers are invited that examine this European-wide phenomenon in relation to one of the following three themes:

Reinvention and ‘authenticity’
In the late nineteenth century Europe artists and designers frequently drew inspiration from mythical history, legend and vernacular traditions; they were also inspired by the forms and mysterious symbols of ancient ‘national’ art or recent archaeological ‘finds’. As artists adapted the narratives and symbols of the past to their own aesthetic, political or nationalist agendas, the original meaning was often lost and the concept of authenticity and originality became a key issue. This session takes a critical perspective on the topic, examining the reinvention and reconstruction of our mythical past.

Rewriting and reinterpretation
This session examines the impact of the national revival through the translation and rewriting of ancient myths and legends. The nineteenth-century saw the revival of ancient sagas such as the Poetry of Ossian, the Kalevala, or the mythical and heroic narratives of the Poetic Edda, while gifted female scholars such as Lady Guest and Lady Augusta Gregory translated the Welsh and Irish legends. This session examines the way in which the myths and legends of the past were rewritten and reinterpreted by European writers and artists, often guided by different national, political and ideological agendas.

Spiritualism and secret societies
Spiritualism and esoteric traditions had a significant place in the European cultural arena around the year 1900. This subject has become an increasingly central topic of research in recent years, but its relationship with national revivals has not been fully examined. Yet, it is well known that these two phenomena were often deeply interconnected. For instance, Celtic mysticism had direct links with spiritualism, theosophy and other occult movements, as did the mystical interpretations of the Kalevala that were popular among Finnish artists, writers, and musicians.

Please send a 500-word abstract to Marja Lahelma (marja.lahelma@helsinki.fi) and Frances Fowle (frances.fowle@ed.ac.uk or ffowle@nationalgalleries.org) by 15 September 2017.

CFP: Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art

'Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art'
Organized by Ghent University and the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA)
In cooperation with the University of Antwerp and the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
15-16 May 2018, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium
URL of the conference website

Aimé-Jules Dalou, Brotherhood (La fraternité), 1883, plaster. Paris, city hall of the Xth arrondissement. Credit: Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Male Bonds is a two-day international conference that aims to explore the place of male bonds in nineteenth-century artistic practice and visual arts. The conference invites participants to reflect on the ways in which changing notions of masculinity and male sexuality impacted forms of sociability between men in the artistic scene of the long nineteenth century. In so doing, it seeks to build a bridge between traditional art-historical scholarship and the fields of gender and gay and lesbian studies: an interdisciplinary exchange of which the full potential for scholarship on the nineteenth century remains to be exploited.

Male homosociality helped structure nineteenth-century European and American society. Its pre-eminence at that time follows, inter alia, from the general separation between men and women in social roles if not in social spheres, and from the lack of a strictly binary view of male sexual orientation. The personal lives and careers of men bore the marks of their relations with other men: with brothers, friends, colleagues, pupils, business associates and many others. Such relations were characterized both by the dynamics of comradeship and by the hierarchies of class, age, race, professional status, etc. They were both established between individuals and in collectivities, especially as fraternal organizations flourished from the late eighteenth century onwards. So intense could men’s relations be that they seem to have included possibilities of a romantic and erotic kind that are foreign to normative relationships between men today, even if male-male intimacy relied upon women’s bodies for its consolidation.

Especially in the fast-paced decades around the turn of the century, changes arose in Europe and the United States that affected male homosociality to varying degrees. Categories such as ‘inversion’ (i.e. the reversal of masculine gender identity) and ‘homosexuality’ came into being through the interplay of increasingly visible queer subcultures and of a discursive explosion emanating from the fields of medicine, psychiatry, law, etc. The increasing conception of same-sex sexualities coincided and intermingled with other challenges to traditional notions of manhood - e.g. fears of degeneration, women’s entry into education, politics and the work force - to such an extent that scholars have described a wide-ranging fin-de-siècle “crisis of masculinity”. Men’s answers to these challenges altered the ways in which they related to other men, establishing for instance a “rough and tough” hegemonic masculinity and what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has designated a “male homosexual panic”.

This conference strives to probe, challenge and expand upon this academic grand narrative of male homosociality through the lens of art history. It aims to establish a multifaceted survey of the male bonds that underpinned nineteenth-century art, and to consider the theoretical and methodological implications of the study thereof. Gender studies, queer theory and gay and lesbian studies have made available a great many histories and concepts with which to critically examine the specificity of gender and sexuality in art: an exchange through which all disciplines involved stand to be enriched. We welcome papers that undertake this interdisciplinary endeavor, and mark men in art history as gendered historical subjects.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Friendships, professional ties and family relations
- The artist’s society, the brotherhood, the academy, the studio
- Links with architecture, music, literature, applied arts, etc.
- Links with politics, law, religion, medicine, sports, the military, etc.
- Intersectionality and the role of class, race, sexuality, age, power, etc.
- Ethnicity, colonialism, orientalism and intercultural encounters
- Homophobia and homoeroticism, same-sex desire, queerness
- Women among men, as solvent and/or detractor of men’s bonds
- Male bonds as an artistic theme, the portrait and Freundschaftsporträt, the male nude

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers in English, to be sent to malebonds@ugent.be by October 15. Please combine in one single pdf file: a 300-word abstract, 1 or 2 images, and a 100-word bio. We also welcome proposals for presentations in French and German, but - if accepted - ask that the accompanying PowerPoint be in English. Selected speakers will be contacted in the course of December. Following the conference, a selection of papers will be peer reviewed and published in a journal or edited volume.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Anthea Callen (University of Nottingham and the Australian National University) and Michael Hatt (University of Warwick)

Organizing committee: Thijs Dekeukeleire (Ghent University), Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Peggy Hobbels (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Katharina Pewny (Ghent University), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University)

Scientific committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University Nijmegen), Gert Buelens (Ghent University), Anthea Callen (University of Nottingham and the Australian National University), Johan De Smet (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Thijs Dekeukeleire (Ghent University), Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp), Stefan Dudink (Radboud University), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History), Katharina Pewny (Ghent University), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum), Abigail Solomon-Godeau (University of California, Santa Barbara), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum), Catherine Verleysen (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Kaat Wils (University of Leuven)

CFP: Revisiting Rediscovery: Early Netherlandish Art in the Long 19th Century

'Revisiting Rediscovery: Early Netherlandish Art in the Long 19th Century'
Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, Ghent, Belgium
May 24-26, 2018

Panel Chairs: Edward Wouk, Assistant Professor, The University of Manchester; Alison Hokanson, Assistant Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francis Haskell famously argued that the “rediscovery” of early Netherlandish painting in the nineteenth century was central to the notions of history and culture that undergirded the rise of the modern nation-states of Belgium and the Netherlands. This view has been enriched by recent scholarship on the medieval and Renaissance revivalist movements that took hold in both countries from about 1840 through the early years of the twentieth century. Yet the complex relationship between artistic and literary practices of the period and the emergence of a distinctly northern European history of art remains largely unexamined, and its implications unacknowledged.

As Léon de Laborde, Camille Lemonnier, Émile Verhaeren, Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert, and, slightly later, Johan Huizinga published pioneering investigations into the world of Van Eyck, Memling, and Rubens, a similar retrospective spirit animated the artistic imagination. Painters from Henri Leys to Fernand Khnopff and writers from Charles De Coster to Maurice Maeterlinck embraced northern precedents as a key source of inspiration for works that were at once contemporary and rooted in a rich regional heritage.

This panel aims to explore the interplay between the visual arts and the nascent field of art history in Belgium and the Netherlands. It seeks twenty-minute papers which address how artists, critics, historians, and others working in the Low Countries and abroad developed diverse perspectives on their past that continue to shape our understanding of the subject. Papers addressing specific instances of revivalism and historicism are welcome, as are broader studies of historiographical and literary trends, which offer insight into how one era may mediate and even define our vision of another.

To submit a proposal for consideration, please send a 250 word abstract, a 100 word bio, and a 1-2 page CV to rediscoveryhna@gmail.com by June 1, 2017. Papers must be based on ongoing research and unpublished. Participants must be HNA members at the time of the conference.

CFP Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art

ESNA Conference: CALL FOR PAPERS (dl. January 15, 2017)
Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art
Antwerp, Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS): June 8-9, 2017

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition ANTWERP À LA CARTE at MAS in Antwerp, this symposium intends to study the various and complex relations between food, the experience of eating, and nineteenth-century art. Modern phenomena such as industrialization, liberalization of the market, urbanization, rise of the middle class, issues of nationality and gender, leisure time and economic upheaval affected the gastronomic field as well as the depiction of it in the visual arts. This new fascination for food was reflected in the entire panoply of the artistic field, ranging from recipes, food literature, decorative arts and interior design to works of art and art criticism.

For this conference, we welcome papers that discuss how the development of the food industry and the changing notion of ‘taste’ and social mores are reflected in nineteenth-century art in the broadest sense. Please send proposals (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute paper (in English) for this conference to esnaonline@hotmail.com by 15 January 2017 at the latest. Selected speakers will be contacted in the course of January 2017.

CFP The art of law, Bruges, Jan. 2017

CFP Conference ‘Visions of the North’, Warwickshire, 17 June 2016

‘Visions of the North’: Reinventing the Germanic ‘North’ in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture in Britain and the Low Countries

A one-day international conference to be held at Compton Verney Museum, Warwickshire, UK: Friday 17^th June 2016

Call for Papers

The aim of this conference is to develop new scholarly insights into the neglected transmission of Netherlandish and German art and thought in nineteenth-century British art and visual culture. It builds on new scholarship generated by an earlier conference, ‘Primitive Renaissances’, at The National Gallery, London (2014), which explored interest in Northern medieval and early Renaissance art and visual culture in later nineteenth-century Europe – in art, writings, collections and in identities of cultural heritage – potently symbolized in the expression of the so-called Northern artist ‘primitive’. ‘Visions of the North’ will develop and complement this first initiative. But its focus is specific ways in which nineteenth-century British art and visual culture, in dialogue with the Low Countries, especially Belgium, engaged with early Netherlandish and German art in shaping modern reinventions and perceptions of their ‘Northern’ identities. The routes by which interest in early Germanic art was developed and disseminated in nineteenth-century Britain and the Low Countries, its linking with German Romantic thought, the responses of British and Belgian collectors, audiences and readers, and the value of its cultural reception are still little understood. ‘Visions of the North’ will seek to bring new insights to the significance and impact of Germanic art in shaping interests, innovations and appropriations central to important public and private collections in Britain and the Low Countries. It will explore changing definitions and meanings of early ‘Germanic’ art, its reception in writings, collections, visual and design practices, and it will ask how responses to Germanic art shaped ideas of Victorian modernity and redefined narratives of ‘national’ character, nation-hood and the cosmopolitan.

The fine collections of Northern Renaissance art at Compton Verney Museum, built up in the late twentieth century, will provide enhanced contexts for the conference themes as well as raise issues about the encounter of nineteenth-century British and continental European collectors, writers and artists with objects from the Germanic ‘North’. Many of these works were dismantled and displaced in post-Reformation Europe, so no longer formed part of complex, intricate multi-part structures. Many were highly emotive and subjective in nature, thus not of immediate appeal to Victorian audiences. The conference will develop fresh knowledge about collections of German and Netherlandish art (whether paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures or the decorative arts); about the reception and transformation of such art in British and in their mirroring Belgian/Low Countries contexts; and about the revival of interest in, and engagement with, the medieval and early Renaissance religious and cultural legacies of Northern Europe. In these ways, the conference seeks to stimulate deeper understanding of how and why cultural and aesthetic processes, practices and values associated with the art of the Germanic North become implicated in new visions and identities in British and neighbouring Low Countries contexts in the long nineteenth century.

We are pleased to invite proposals for papers addressing nineteenth-century Britain/the Low Countries, especially Belgium, that focus on (but are not limited to) the following indicative areas:

·         Historiographies of Germanic art revivals, renaissances and reinventions;

·         Identities/geographies/meanings of ‘Netherlandish’ and ‘Germanic’ art;

·         Taste, beauty and Northern Renaissance art;

·         The impact of Germanic art, philosophy and German Romanticism;

·         Religion, history, and the Germanic North in narratives of modernity;

·         Private/public collecting of early Germanic works;

·         Netherlandish and Germanic prints and the print trade;

·         Germanic art travel, cosmopolitanism and art writing in Britain and the Low Countries;

·         The role of Germanic art in cultural tourism and art markets;

·         Artists’ responses to Germanic art;

·         Germanic art in ‘national’ collections/discourses;

·         Reframing Catholic/Protestant identities of Germanic Renaissance visual cultures;  

·         Portraits and the early Germanic North: identities of ‘national’ character and mood;

·         Pre-Raphaelites and early Germanic art;

·         Northern interiors: displays, interiors, homes;

·         Staging/photographing the visual cultures of the Germanic North;

·         Northern fakes, forgeries: reinventing/performing ideas of visual and material inheritance and taste;

·         Translating the North; writing the North

·         Reinventing ideas of a Germanic North in industry, craft and design;

·         Reimagining/Imaging/Re-writing the Northern Gothic city in art, design and literary reception

Abstracts of 250-300 words (maximum) titled ‘Visions of the North’ should be sent to: juliet.simpson@coventry.ac.uk by Friday 29^th January 2016.

Please send abstracts in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format.

Please include the following details with your abstract:  name and surname, affiliation, contact e-mail address and short biography. 

Organizing Committee:

Prof. Juliet Simpson, Coventry University, UK

Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein, University of York, UK

Dr Susanna Avery-Quash, The National Gallery, London

Dr Marjan Sterckx, Ghent University, Belgium

Proposals will be selected by peer-review and there will be a publication based on the conference papers.

This conference is generously supported by

                                

CFP Ghent Feb. 2016: Sculpting abroad. International mobility of nineteenth-century sculptors and their work.

Ghent, 26-27 February 2016.

Deadline proposal: 1 October 2015

Sculpting abroad. International mobility of nineteenth-century sculptors and their work.

Organized by the Department of Art History, Ghent University, and the Department of History, KULeuven Campus Kortrijk.

In collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, ESNA (European Society of Nineteenth-Century Art) and research platform XIX

Keynote presentations by Antoinette Le Normand-Romain (INHA, Paris) and Sura Levine (Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts)

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War drove the young Auguste Rodin and his master Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse to Belgium, where they both acquired some public commissions despite objections against their French nationality. Even though war was perhaps one of the most radical reasons driving sculptors beyond the borders of their own nation, the mentioned transnational trajectories of both Rodin and Carrier-Belleuse were by no means isolated or coincidental incidents. The study of old and new collections of art, as well as the studios of renowned masters in Paris or Rome attracted many aspiring sculptors to the old and new artistic capitals of Europe. Alternative art markets, commissions or exhibition opportunities activated many sculptors to pursue a career abroad, despite of the difficulties their foreignness, and their bulky discipline in a foreign country might have implied. Additionally, sculptors were, probably even more so than painters, dependent on commissions, and therefore often obliged to travel to provide for their revenues. The presence of foreign sculptors on large construction sites, or their involvement in prestigious public commissions, however, often led to hostilities by native colleagues, who feared for their positions and possibilities, when confronted with skilled foreign competition.  

During this two-day symposium, speakers are invited to reflect upon the subject matter of the transnational mobility of sculptors and the implications for these artists and their art during the long nineteenth century. In the course of this century, the creation of nation-states coincided with an increasing international focus by artists, their commissioners, sellers, buyers and critics. The impact of a sculptor’s nationality on his reception and ‘imaging’, as well as their mobility across borders remain ambiguous. Sculptors were regularly encouraged to study abroad, and recognized for their experience and success beyond the borders of the own nation. Simultaneously, however, they were often expected to represent the nation, and showcase the own ‘national school’ with its peculiar properties, and extending from the own national tradition.

This conference aims to address the role of art criticism, the art market, exhibitions, education, commissions etc. for sculptors in an international context, and the implications for their (inter)national or local identity. Participants are invited to reflect on the theoretical and/or practical implications of (trans)nationality, travel and cultural mobility on nineteenth-century sculptors and their work.

Papers may include but are not limited to the following topics:

-          Transnational exchange (both between centres and peripheries), internationalism of sculptors and their work.

-          Travel and mobility of sculptors and sculptures.

-          Nationality, nationalism,  and the development of nationhood in relation to the development of sculpture.

-          Prejudice, or even rejection, due to a sculptor’s foreign nationality.

-          Transnational friendships between sculptors, or hostilities because of their nationality

-          National or international appeal of public commissions and competitions announced abroad.

-          The impact of foreign experience and recognition on the national reputation and ‘imaging’ of a sculptor.

-          Discussion and reviewing of foreign sculptors and ‘sculpture schools’ in foreign, national and local press.

-          The ambiguous, sometimes opportunistic attitudes of sculptors in league of commissions and recognition towards their own nationality.

-          The construction of ‘national schools’ in sculpture in relation to a local/national/international tradition.

-          Comparisons of different ‘national sculpture schools’, and the question whether it is possible to distinguish a national style for sculpture in the first place.

-          Mechanisms of international influencing in nineteenth-century sculpture.

-      Identity and ‘national schools’ and the arts, notably sculpture.

-          Commercial or artistic drivers of mobility for sculptors.

-          Movement at meta/macro/micro levels of both sculptors and sculptures.

-          Artistic practice vs. theory in sculpture.

-          Gender and mobility in the practice of sculpture.

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minute duration. Please send a 300 word abstract and a brief biographical statement (max 150 words) attached in PDF to sculpture.conference@ugent.be by no later than October, 1, 2015.

This symposium originates from the research project “In search of a national (s)cul(p)ture. Belgian sculptors abroad and foreign sculptors in Belgium”, funded by BOF, Ghent University.